The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Roman)

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The Bridge of San Luis Rey ( The Bridge of San Luis Rey ) was Thornton Wilder's second novel. The book, first published in 1927, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1928 and has been filmed several times. Time magazine ranks the novel among the top 100 English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005.

The book tells the story of the five people who died in the collapse of an old suspension bridge on the way between Lima and Cusco in 1714 , and their chronicler Brother Juniper, a Franciscan who was present during the accident and who ultimately became a heretic because of his research dies by fire. According to the author, the one-act drama Le Carrosse du Saint-Sacrement by Prosper Mérimée served as a template . The central philosophical question is the representability of a supra-individual meaning of life.

Two historical personalities are integrated into the plot: Manuel de Amat y Juniet , who was Viceroy of Peru from 1761 to 1776 , and his maitresse , the actress and singer La Perricholi , real name Micaela Villegas (1748-1819) and heroine of Offenbach - La Périchole operetta . Merimée and Wilder used the bridge over the Río Apurímac built by the Incas around 1350 , which was still in use around 1864, as a model for the bridge .

Film adaptations